Isn’t this one (CIA vs KGB) being converted to a Star Wars theme? If true then it would probably become even more of a gateway game.
I wanted to say could this be adjusted to a Game of Thrones version but then I remembered there already is one! ;)
Yes it is, I hope they make it more interesting than CIA vs KGB.
if someone has a 1st edition of cold war cia vs kgb they want to dump let me know.
Isn’t this one (CIA vs KGB) being converted to a Star Wars theme? If true then it would probably become even more of a gateway game.
I thought FFG couldn’t make board games (or is this considered a card game.
This weekend’s solo game on the table is Cuba Libre
I’m playing the government forces and trying to figure out how in the heck I’m going to get a base into rebel held territories at this point.
The Star Wars game is a card game. (I don’t know what their legal arrangements are.)
SOLO game weekend. VPG style. Dawn of the Zeds 2nd Edition and Darkest Night with all the new expansions. Wow! I’m officially a VPG Fanboy.
Slow down there, Andon. That’s way too much solitaire goodness for one weekend!
-Tom
Nice, casual night of boardgaming for me tonight: Five games of One Night Werewolf and a game of King of Tokyo, with expansion (where my Alienoid got whacked early by that treacherous Pandakai).
Man I need to get me copy of those.
QT3 is so bad for my wallet. The other boardgame thread made me hunt down a copy of Consulting Detective from a local online retailer before it gets impossible to find.
They’re both superb games. If you get DoZ 2nd edition now, they throw in a fantastic new map that was designed by a fan. It’s paper, unfortunately, but I really prefer it to the mounted map.
Finished my game up last night with a win against the Necromancer. First time I’ve gotten a Holy Ritual win.
I’ve been playing that one, too, for a good while.
Also, Struggle of Empires.
And the usual Euro fare, Castles of Burgundy, etc, since friends like that stuff.
Did you catch my erroneous 26th July control marker in the province below Havana? :)
The two things I always have trouble with in a COIN game is remembering to adjust things like that in real time, and remembering to pay for non-player factions’ actions with resources.
After another couple of hours last night with my game, I was honestly surprised to see the AI tearing me apart in a pretty intelligent manner. The DR is actually taking control of areas outside rebel or Government reach, while the 26th July forces are shoring up their control of Sierra Maestra and making inroads into Syndicate areas. After the first propaganda card, I was hurting pretty bad.
Is there any way to get a government base into provinces outside of placement by a card?
I didn’t catch the control marker mistake, I didn’t look that closely. :)
You can place a government base by the Train operation, by replacing two cubes with a base…or am I misunderstanding the question?
You can only train in provinces with an existing government base or in a city space, though. You can then replace two cubes with a base in one of the spaces you trained in as the last step in a train operation (or perform a civic action instead). Unless I misinterpreted that, that means you can’t place a base in a province without an existing base as you can’t train in those areas to begin with.
We played Ankh-Morpork three times in a row this weekend. I was surprised by it. I thought it was going to be a light intro board game that we’d get a play or two out of and then set aside until we needed something to get someone into the hobby with. While it does have all the advantageous of an intro game (turns go by fairly quickly, actions feel light, and the game is short), there’s still a lot of strategy to playing well.
The game has hidden victory conditions, sort of like Archipelago in their drama, where someone can win the game if the board is set up for their hidden victory condition at the beginning of their turn. This leads to a lot of trying to guess who’s who and making sure certain victory conditions never stick on the board. Because all the victory conditions are known and most of them are fairly easy to stomp down, to win you need to actually plan out a winning hand. Using interrupt cards, you may be able to setup victory conditions on another players turn, for example. Or you need to set up a hand that combos a lot allowing you to grossly overshoot your victory condition to such a degree it can’t be undone. What’s great is these systems keep the drama high until the last possible second. In our three player games, if someone did meet a victory condition, there were two people who may be able to upset it, so the drama was high while their turns were passing. Then, when it gets back to the player who may win, you find out that wasn’t the victory condition they were going for and it was just coincidental they’d hit on it. Until the moment someone declares victory, the game is always up in the air.
I really love the events in this game as well. Events only come out if someone plays a card with an event symbol on it, but while those cards are somewhat rare, they’re also powerful so they’re likely to get played. The events can be as minor as discarding a few cards from the draw deck to immediately ending the game, causing final scoring to determine the winner. There’s a pretty big number of events and we’d seen maybe a third of them in three plays, so there’s lots of room for variance from game to game.
This game carries the genetics of a bunch of other Martin Wallace success as well. For instance, like Liberte and London, this game has a somewhat prescribed deck where the first half of the cards are from deck A and the second half of the cards are from deck B. The cards players play with increase in power and drama in the B deck, so the narrative flow of the game often involves a gradual build up of powers until the B deck is out, then massive power-plays swing the board every direction until someone wins or the game comes to a grinding halt at the conclusion of the deck.
All that said and I haven’t even touched on all the fantastic thematic elements (that are great if you’ve read Discworld books, but vibrant even if you haven’t). I especially like when demons hit the board. They cause regions to no longer score or count towards victory conditions. This doesn’t make the competing lords band together to destroy the demons. Instead, it causes all the lords to flee, pulling their possessions to regions they can exploit and ignoring those being torn apart by demons. What a great little systemic narrative.
I think this game will hit the table a lot more. It seems like it’d fit with a wide range of player skill levels and still be interesting, and there’s still a lot I haven’t even seen come out of the game yet. Great purchase.
My family likes this game, too but I think it is due to the Disc World theme. I do not believe they would have liked it especially my daughter if they were not familiar with the books/miniseries that has earned their affection.
I agree that it has a lot more going for it than what one would imagine.
You can use the Transport special activity to move cubes to a province, then use Train to place a base. You can use the Operations and Special Activity in any order. As long as you have the cubes in a city or base to begin with.
Interesting! Learning the goals (and how to recognize them) as well as all the city abilities seems a bit onerous for a gateway game. Does your family have trouble with that or do they just ignore them?